You'll still be in the circus when I'm laughing, laughing in my grave

[alexsarll]

How did a concrete campus monstrosity such as the Brunswick Centre ever lurk so long in the heart of Bloomsbury without my noticing it? This city doesn't give up her secrets easily, that's for sure.

I was there to see Performance. Last time I saw this was about a decade ago, on a sofa in Derby, when I was still somewhere within view of innocence, and it all seemed dreadfully exotic. This time around the comedy was more apparent. I don't just mean the line, to Mick Jagger as himselfTurner, "Comical little geezer, intcha? You'll look funny when you're fifty." (Though admittedly that did have the whole cinema in stitches.) I mean in the more genderal way that people staggering around in a haze of narcosis can look quite amusing if you're stone-cold sober and no longer inherently impressed by such things.
None of which is to deny that it's still a very sexy and sometimes unsettling film. It's just that, as ever, the closer I get to anything, the harder it gets to take it entirely seriously.

Tell my teenage self that, once I'd relocated to London, I'd attend the cinema with friends for Performance sober and then head straight home, and I'd be unimpreszsed. But I was tired, and so were most of them, and there'll always be another party along soon enough. And it was worth it to catch the first episode of vivisection-com I Am Not An Animal, which is every bit as brilliant as one would expect from a new comedy featuring Steve Coogan and Simon Pegg. Even if they are voicing animals who have been given human intellect and then reared exclusively on lifestyle magazines. It's a satire on the vacuity of contemporary culture, sure, and my tolerance for those isn't that high, but it succeeds through its absurdity. I'm always complaining about much-loved comedies like The Office which hope to satirise reality simply by replicating it in microscopic detail, because to work for me they need to turn it up to 11. A talking horse assuming that other animals can't talk because "They're working class. People below a certain level of breeding can't talk, only point at one another and fight" works for me.

Comments

[thermaland.livejournal.com]

Some of the enjoyment to be had from watching the Office comes from the fact that it turns up to 11 in short random bursts that you don't quite see coming, e.g. the charity dancing. But I give up on trying to convince you.

Then again I watched I Am Not An Animal and laughed not a single time. Plus it's extremely ugly.

[oneofthose.livejournal.com]

I agree with him, there.
I switched over Animals and found a new episode of South Park. They had all gone metrosexual thanks to Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. They held the first metrosexual pride march: "We're here, we're not queer - but we're close."

"I'm not oneofthose" - Chas

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You just don't like Britcoms you're not in anymore...

Was this new episode on proleTV?

Re: "I'm not oneofthose" - Chas

[oneofthose.livejournal.com]

No, Murdochvision.

Re: "I'm not oneofthose" - Chas

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

Crab people!

[peacockpunk.livejournal.com]

That episodes been online for ages.

http://www.suprnova.org/

Have you got bit-torrent?

I'm sure we've been through this one before:

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I HAVE NO DOWNLOAD FACILITIES WHATSOEVER.

While we're shouting, Bazza:

[peacockpunk.livejournal.com]

I WAS REPLYING TO TIM!

Re: While we're shouting, Bazza:

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

BVGGER ME, SO YOU WERE.

Re: While we're shouting, Bazza:

[peacockpunk.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, you can download loads of comics from the supernova site - all Invisibles, Flex Mantello and others.

Any requests? She-Hulk? ;P

Re: While we're shouting, Bazza:

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sorted for the current series, ta, and what I've seen of prior ones was uninspiring. But yes, I know many people who feed their comics habits online. For the out-of-print stuff it's a godsend.
Where are those demos, anyway?

Re: While we're shouting, Bazza:

[peacockpunk.livejournal.com]

I'm printing covers and cutting them out as we speak. Apologies for tardiness - i'll send 'em tomorrow!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

So's South Park.

And I thought the montage effect worked brilliantly on the animals.

Thus far, the only colleague who saw it also loathed it.

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

Oh no, you're not going to make me watch The Office now too, are you?

[thermaland.livejournal.com]

Of course not, Honey.

[shewho.livejournal.com]

ah the good ol brunswick centre, handy for popping to supermarket on breaks when money does not exist and cashbackc does....

[ksta.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the animal thing too. Muchly.
Mind you, the thing that had me belly laughing for the first time in ages was Dead Ringers. A VERY good ep last night.
Tony:
vote for me. please. Oh all right, I'll get my cock out.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

I remember thinking last night 'I thought that's what I'd be like when was a grown-up' and although I may have been for a couple of evenings in the last 12 years, my life is so very far removed from what 14 year old me thought it would be. It would have been much more fun to have watched it on a tiny bit of fly agaric....

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

One of the realisations I had last night was that I really wouldn't want to live like that. Just visit at weekends.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Yes. My thoughts exactly, my problem is that the several lives I would like to live all at once would need to be rotated on a shift basis so I'd always be a visitor...equally blessed and cursed, I suppose.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

And that element of scheduling would itself be anathema to the more bohemian lives, of course.

It's only in London that I've ever felt like I was a core member of any of my circles, really. And even here I still feel like an occasional cameo in most of them. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Supporting parts are often far more interesting; I much preferred Angel in Buffy to when he had his own series.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Well that's exactly it, when you're a good supporting character, people watch every week hoping you'll be in it. When you're a lead, people know you'll be on every week and get bored with you.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

The Brunswick Centre's been there forever. It's like a flyover raped a conservatory, which then birthed its freckled whelp right in the centre of London.

As for PERFORMANCE, I saw the showing at the ICA in conjunction with flogging a load of photos taken on set at the time; there was a showing of the film, followed by a showing of Donald Cammell's last interview before he topped himself, then Q & A with Anita Pallenberg, James Fox and Cammell's brother. Fascinating stuff. Pallenberg looks like a withered prune nowadays. Very depressing. Her whole contribution to the script was ironing it after in fell in the sea at St Tropez, which is a very rock n' roll thing to do.

And I was sat directly in front of Harry Flowers! That was a disturbing revelation, I can tell you. Oh, and the person who plays Rosey Bloom is as intimidating in real life as on screen.

The "funny when you're fifty" line raised quite a chuckle then, too.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sat in front of Harry Flowers? Blimey! If the goons didn't get you the body hair would!

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

I felt in imminent danger of being made into a "faggy little leather boy with a shorter piece of stick."

Gah, I really want to listen to the soundtrack now.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I have a tape of it but tbh the only bit that I ever want to hear away from the film is 'Memo from Turner'.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

The Merry Clayton stuff is excellent - well worth listening to. Unlike, say, the Last Poets, which is just embarrassing.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Quite. "Perhaps you did invent hip hop. Several improvements have been made since. Now be off with you."

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

The Brunswick Centre: Also notable for containing that fantastic Skoob 2nd hand bookshop.

There. Who said I wasn't interesting and informative?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Having failed to spot my waiting companions, I nipped in there.
The paperbacks were filed by publisher.
I frown on this practice in comic shops. In bookshops it's simply bizarre.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Mm. I suppose I was seduced by the oddness of the place. Makes Foyles look like a masterpiece of organisation.

HMV should arrange their stuff by record company, similarly.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

And you can go for lunch in the mad barginacious caff which has a 3 course meal for a fiver and £200 bottles of wine on the drinks menu. It's SO a money laundering front, but a tasty one at that so I don't mind one notch.